


Mise en Scène

by yuletide_archivist



Category: The Persuaders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:17:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1631099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny gets in trouble, Brett gets worried, a Vermeer is destroyed, no one cares, and then there is a first time slash kind of thing that happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mise en Scène

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Blackbird Song

 

 

> **A large, square room. Time, unknown. Location: Paris.**
> 
>   
> 
> 
> "Very well, Mr. Langlois... if that is indeed your name... why don't you introduce to us your so-famous collection?"
> 
> The man who had been calling himself Henri Langlois jumped to his feet and began turning to the tall curtain behind him with a grand gesture, then appeared to change his mind at the last moment. "You know what?" he said, in an accent that bore traces of French inflection, but owed much more to the American continent, and particularly to a certain area of New York. "I think we should let ze paintings speak for themselves. That way the collection can have its, uh, full impact. Much better than if I just told you what you were looking at. More va va voom." 
> 
> Unimpressed, the long-faced man in the perfectly white shirt and blue checked suit lowered a hand below the table, and the heavy, sweating man with the thick moustache who sat to his right and the slim, cool-featured young woman on his left moved slightly away to either side. 
> 
> "I am afraid I must insist," said the long-faced man. "You see, my colleagues and I have been having some doubts that we did, indeed, make contact with the real Henri Langlois, connoisseur and collector of works of the Dutch masters. If you are he, you will know, of course, what lies behind that curtain, the pride of your collection, and the overarching theme of all the paintings in this room. We request that you describe it before we continue any further." 
> 
> The small man in the blue velvet jacket bent forward, his lively eyes snapping. "Well, I'm hurt, Mr. Beaumont. That wounds me. What kind of world are we coming to when a man can't arrange to have his own paintings stolen and smuggled without getting accused of some kind of dishonest behavior?" He put his fists on his hips.
> 
> "The collection," Beaumont said sternly. "Introduce it. Oh, and—" he added, with the first real change of expression, a cold smile, raising a hand to interrupt the man as he seemed about to speak. "I should warn you that we have employed another test as well. Do you recall that cup of coffee you had a few minutes ago, prepared by the charming Dominique?" 
> 
> He indicated the young woman, who stood and crossed to the wall, refusing to meet the other man's eyes. "You may have noted there were two cups, standing side by side. One was black, the other held cream and sugar. One, in short, was prepared the way, the _only_ way, Mr. Henri Langlois has ever been observed to drink it; the other, in a way he detests."
> 
> A troubled expression came to the face of the man standing before the curtain, as if something had begun to sink in. 
> 
> "If you are, in fact, the collector with whom we had wished to do business, then we may all proceed without a moment's worry. However, if you are an impostor and selected the wrong cup, then you have been drugged by a sedative most powerful, and will collapse within, oh, seconds." Beaumont sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers. "Continue."
> 
> "Right," the man in the velvet jacket said, with something like a growl. Then he straightened and began pacing. "All right. You want to know what this collection is about, I'll tell you. All of it. Every last one of these paintings is about..." He turned to face his audience of three, two skeptical men and one pale, black-haired girl who stood holding the pull rope for the curtains and delicately biting her lip.
> 
> "WAR!" he concluded, making a fist. "Yes, war. Blood. Violence. Suffering. The agony of defeat." He wheeled the other direction. "The triumph of victory! The cries of mothers and lovers watching their brave boys march away—that, my friends, is what these paintings are all about." 
> 
> "I see," Beaumont said. "You may turn around now." 
> 
> The man spun to see the paintings, now revealed, lining the walls of the small chamber. The largest, directly behind him, showed a woman in a voluminous skirt seated at a pianoforte, in a shaft of sunlight. The other paintings showed women reading letters, playing instruments, talking with men, or in one case doing all three at once, although that one bore a small label that said _Probable forgery (see prov.)_
> 
> "The Dutch masters celebrated domesticity, wealth, and leisure," said the heavyset man, speaking for the first time, in a thicker and much more genuine French accent. "We see here the social claims of the rising merchant class and an exploration of the objective science of perspective." 
> 
> "Ha!" said the man in the velvet jacket, turning on the balls of his feet again as if it went against his nature to keep still. "That's what you think, is it? Shows what you know. You never heard of a metaphor?" He stalked rapidly closer to the painted figures and started pointing at various details. 
> 
> "Maybe if you didn't know your stuff and you were taking all this at face value, the unsophisticated way, you might think that. I don't know where you get your so-called experts from, Beaumont," and he glared at the heavyset man, whose name was Claubert, as if with personal dislike, "but any real art collector will tell you that all these letters represent dispatches from the front. The keys of the pianos symbolize battle marches, the women are the soul of the country, what they're fighting to protect, and those men are soldiers, dreaming of returning home. The peace is a cry for help—can't you hear the men's screams in the whiteness of the walls and the gold, um, embroidery on those... big... big dresses?" 
> 
> The slippage in his confident delivery managed somehow to go unnoticed, as the three other occupants of the room stared at him in fascination. "He has not fallen," said the girl, Dominique. 
> 
> "Can he possibly be the real Langlois?" mused Beaumont. 
> 
> "He makes a very interesting argument," said the heavyset man, distractedly twisting the end of his moustache.
> 
> The speaker slammed his hand down on the table, lurching slightly but smiling, his lips as red as a girl's. "Of course I'm the real Langlois! That's what I keep telling you. Now, can we do our deal and wrap this up? I've got a real nice set of statues at home I want to go buy. I mean, buy them and bring them home. Or sell them." He was starting to sweat.
> 
> Beaumont studied him, hand hovering, undecided. "Of course, he might have chosen the correct cup simply by accident, even though it sat farther away," he said. 
> 
> "No—no—I believe he is the man," Dominique said with a touch of anxiety.
> 
> "Can it be that we have overlooked the true meaning of the letters and the keys all this time?" muttered a voice at the other end of the table, which they ignored.
> 
> There were shouts and crashes outside: never a good sign during clandestine dealings. The art expert with the large moustache leapt to his feet, drawing a gun and aiming at the man still leaning against the table, who seized it also with a surprisingly flexible lunge and began to wrestle it from him. The girl called Dominique stepped forcefully on a pedal in the floor that opened an passage into the rear hall, and Beaumont put his hand at last fully under the table. 
> 
> The man who was not, in fact, and had never been Henri Langlois, at this point began to slowly slide to the floor, even though he still gripped the handle of the gun, because he had swallowed a large amount of a powerful sedative and had been keeping himself in motion only by pure will. Of which he had an abundance. His name was Danny Wilde, and he'd been in this kind of situation before. 
> 
> Shots were fired.
> 
> When the door burst open, a tall, handsome man in a suit of equivalent value to at least two of the paintings currently on the wall burst in, followed by a flood of gendarmes. They found the curtain flapping in an open passageway leading to the alley beyond, and three bodies lying on the floor: Danny, very pale, and apparently unconscious; a large man with an ugly moustache and an uglier bullet hole; and a young woman, also shot in the chest, although she, unlike her colleague, appeared to still be alive.
> 
> When the tall man had satisfied himself that Danny was also still breathing and appeared physically unharmed, he investigated the room a bit further, noting certain oddities about the positioning of the bodies and the place where a bullet had (tragically) torn right through a legitimate Vermeer. Then he beckoned to the head officer with a crook of his finger, and in low tones, began to arrange matters.
> 
> Money changed hands... 
> 
>   
> 
> 
> Danny's head swam. And not in the good way. This was the way that you were definitely sorry about, even if you weren't sure what had happened the night before, and where the hell was he, anyway? And where was Brett? He opened his eyes. 
> 
> "Ah! How are you feeling," Brett said, right on time as if he'd been sitting there waiting every minute of the night and day for Danny to wake up, but as casually as if he'd just happened to wander in at that exact moment. Knowing Brett, it could be either one. 
> 
> "Like a three-day bender with no oysters," Danny said vaguely, trying to push himself up. Brett put a hand on his chest and pushed him back down, winning easily because of the leverage.
> 
> "Uh-uh. You're staying in bed until a doctor's had another look at you. I don't know what they slipped you, but it was much stiffer than your usual cocktail." 
> 
> "Coffee with a twist, huh?" Danny blinked, and rolled onto his side, going up on his elbow again. "That's right. It wasn't cocktails, it was coffee."
> 
> "Do you remember anything else?" Brett still sounded casual, but he was trying too hard, it wasn't on the level: you could see there was something he wanted to know, something important. Danny frowned and thought hard, staring at the bedside table. Brett made a small noise and removed the carafe of brandy, replacing it with a glass of water. 
> 
> "Yeah, yeah, I got it. Art collectors. Smugglers. Me in the wrong place at the wrong time again. A girl named Dominique. ...Ah." He stopped and smiled as memories briefly made his head all better. "Uh. Shooting. I don't remember after that." 
> 
> "I see," Brett said. "Well, don't worry, I've taken care of it. I'm afraid Beaumont escaped, carrying the gun with him, and the police say they fear he may come in search of you, as he's known for his tendency to violent revenge, but the art expert, Claubert, is dead, and although the girl will live, she's in very bad condition and won't be able to testify for quite some time. By then I'm sure she'll have forgotten all about it. The paintings have been returned, the real Langlois has been found, and it's quite possible you may even get a reward." 
> 
> He patted Danny smartly on the cheek—the kind that stings a little, so you could be sure he wasn't getting mushy or nothing—and started to get out of the chair.
> 
> "Yeah? That's great. Wait."
> 
> "You must rest now, Daniel. You'll need your strength." 
> 
> "Beaumont took the gun? The gun I took from Claubert? Why would he do that? He had his own, under the table." 
> 
> Brett shrugged. "No one seems particularly worried about that question." 
> 
> "Oh." Danny started to sink down again, then lifted his head. "Well, I am. It doesn't make sense." 
> 
> "Of course it doesn't, but details don't matter too much to the French, I find. Now, if you'll just..."
> 
> "What is going on here?" Danny sat all the way up, and Brett, reluctantly, sat back down. "If he didn't take the gun, where'd it go? What are you trying to pull, Brett? Yeah, I see those beady, shifty little eyes. I'm surprised you ever got away with anything as a kid." 
> 
> "My eyes are a clear, cornflower-like blue, they have often been admired, and my nurse was deaf," Brett said, somewhere between prim and exasperated. "Very well. I wasn't going to bring this up until you were feeling better, but it wasn't entirely clear what had happened in that room, and it seemed best for the gun to disappear. Just in case." 
> 
> "But it was self-defense. Claubert was going to plug me. I got him first and I got him good, what more do you want?" 
> 
> "And... the girl?"
> 
> "What. Dominique?" Danny rubbed his forehead, starting to frown. "I didn't shoot her. Why would I? She was fine last I saw." 
> 
> "Yes, that's what I just told you," Brett said.
> 
> "Well, it's true. You could see by where we were in the room, right? She wasn't trying to get me. I know she wasn't. I'da had to shoot Claubert, go over there, shoot her, and come back. Now why would I do a thing like that?" 
> 
> Brett studied the water glass. "Revenge for leading you into a trap?" he said. "You must forgive me, but I find this country does love to prosecute a crime passionel. I know you two had been, er, close." 
> 
> "Close? If you can call it that, I only met her yesterday." 
> 
> "Well, that doesn't normally stop you." 
> 
> "I do not go around shooting girls," Danny said sternly, sitting up straight. "And she was a nice kid. You're the one who swiped the gun? This was a cover-up?" 
> 
> "I really should be going now—" 
> 
> "You thought I did it. You thought I did it! You thought I tried to kill her! You'd cover up a murder for me?"
> 
> "Danny, I'd kill for you," Brett said, his voice dead serious all of a sudden, and even a little wild. 
> 
> Then he stood up quickly, blank and cheerful as cherry pie, dodging lightly around the chair and talking over all Danny's questions and protests. "—No idea what you're talking about—you must get some rest—Doesn't sound at all likely, does it? You're clearly still very sick." The door closed firmly over Danny's last shout. 
> 
> Danny started struggling to get out of bed and follow him, but the tightly tucked covers had him pinned, and had to do some swearing and thrashing to get loose. That drug hadn't done him any favors. By the time he was done, his hands were shaking, and he had to rest a minute before swinging down to the floor and setting off in search of Brett. They were back in London now, in Brett's flat, and he knew where the bedroom was, although not from ever having gotten a foot in there in the nighttime, which he'd always thought was too bad. He'd never tried just barging in before, though. He did that now. 
> 
> "Now you listen to me," Danny began, and stopped, finding the lights off and Brett lying in bed already, his head propped up on some really enormous pillows. Brett, in bed, at night. Him walking in. He'd imagined this scene about four hundred different ways, and none of them involved him talking about paintings. Some of them had involved models. That was similar, but different. Some of them involved stewardesses. 
> 
> Brett waited, then sat up and cleared his throat, holding onto the sheets with both hands. He said with the old spit-in-your-eye pleasantness, "Was there something you wanted, or did you simply lose your way in the dark?"
> 
> Danny rallied. "I got two things to say to you," he announced, coming over to the bed and getting ready to count them out on his fingers. He started with the boring one to get it out of the way. "One. If I didn't shoot that girl, who did? I'll tell you. Beaumont." 
> 
> "Ah—I see. Yes."
> 
> "Who else had the motive? She knew too much. She was going to spill the beans to me, or somebody else, the next guy with a friendly smile who walked through that door. He had to get rid of her."
> 
> "I think the real underpinnings of the plot may be a little more complicated than that, but we can discuss that later, after we've all had some sleep." Brett started to get up to show him the door, but Danny didn't step out of his way, and Brett subsided warily. 
> 
> "Two," Danny said. "Now I don't know for sure what we're doing here, you and me, or why we're _not_ doing it, but I always had a pretty good feeling it's because you don't— Down!" he shouted as bright lights swept through the window, cutting across their bodies.
> 
> They were lying on the bed. He'd shoved Brett under him, and bullets weren't flying, it turned out. He could hear a car, though, pulling up and cutting its engine, where a car had no business being this time of night.
> 
> "That was two?" Brett asked, perfectly calmly. 
> 
> "Well, no, I guess some of that was three. Sorry." Glass broke in the living room.
> 
> Danny had rolled off before he got told and started leading the way, Brett taking a moment to put on his slippers before shuffling after him. Some colder air hit them as they reached the scene, which had clouds of smoke from the jagged broken window to the metal thing in the center of the floor. Danny covered his face with his sleeve and dropped to the carpet. _Too late, if it's a grenade,_ said the part of Danny that had paid attention in the Navy, and _eight ball in the left side pocket,_ said the rest, as he scooped the canister up and lobbed it back out the window, where it bounced and rolled on concrete without any kind of explosion, just a lot of coughing from outside. Good. Smoke bomb it was. Brett was coughing too. 
> 
> "Looks like art collectors make house calls," Danny said. 
> 
> "I'll phone the police," Brett said, picking up the receiver. He shook it a few times. 
> 
> "Bet they cut the wires."
> 
> "I won't phone the police." Brett dropped the fancy receiver back on its cradle with a sigh. He wondered if he could get some sort of insurance for his telephone. 
> 
> Danny was peering out around the living room curtains, gesturing frantically. Brett came to join him. A car was pulled up nearby; there was gunfire. Danny jerked back. "That's him, all right." 
> 
> "And friends. Any ideas?" 
> 
> Danny leaned out again, then dodged back from the next round of bullets. "Keep any guns in this place?" he hissed out of the corner of his mouth.
> 
> "I didn't want to encourage this sort of thing." 
> 
> "Don't blame you. Well, we have to get rid of them somehow." Danny looked around. "You attached to any of this junk?"
> 
> The flat was somewhat overcrowded at the moment, as Brett had recently inherited a collection of objets d'art and furniture that he hadn't had time to have appraised. "It belonged to my great-aunt Fiona. Most of it's very valuable."
> 
> "So you won't mind if I throw some of it out the window, then." Danny picked up a—well, that china dog really was very ugly—and heaved it through the gap in the broken glass. There was a yelp and a clatter as someone dropped a gun. 
> 
> Brett was distracted from his interior wrestling between sense of family duty and self-preservation. "Excellent shot, Daniel! Have you ever considered playing cricket?" 
> 
> "Hand me that shepherdess."
> 
> It—it did have to be done, and really, Great Aunt Fiona had had appalling taste. 
> 
> As they took turns hurling anything and everything up to the useless ceramic telephone out the window at the attacking thugs, Brett spared a breath to ask, "So, if this was three, what was two?"
> 
> "Eh?"
> 
> He stopped Danny's groping hand, which held a bookend, and pressed its twin into the other. Best to keep the destruction orderly, that would simplify paperwork later. "What was two." 
> 
> "Oh, right." Danny tagged one of the thugs very neatly on the shoulder, producing curses and dancing, and then the man turned and ran away, ignoring Beaumont's shouts. "I was saying I get the feeling you don't take me seriously. Think I'm all fun and games, a different girl every night."
> 
> "Not at all," Brett said. He picked up a paperknife, rejected it as too potentially lethal, and selected a paperweight with a butterfly in it instead. 
> 
> "Thank you." 
> 
> "I'm perfectly aware that some nights it's fellas." Brett gave the paperweight a snap of the wrist and plenty of spin. Its target made a very satisfactory howl. 
> 
> Danny sulked. "It's not true. You know, some nights people are shooting at me." He rummaged for more ammunition. "Look, it doesn't have to be that way," he said over his shoulder.
> 
> "No? Leopards don't change their spots, Daniel—" 
> 
> Danny turned around with two more of the awful china mongrels in his hands. "Old dogs can learn new tricks. Ha _-ha._ " He tossed one to Brett, and they hurled them as a set to the pavement outside, sending Beaumont, who was advancing with a murderous snarl, zigzagging clumsily as he fired upwards.
> 
> "Teach a man to fish..." Brett said, ducking back to survey the room again and breathing rather hard. 
> 
> Danny stared at him, his dark hair sticking up in disarray and his clothes rumpled from being slept in. "What are we talking about?"
> 
> "No idea."
> 
> As one, they lifted either side of one of the love seats, knocking over its mate as they staggered to the window, and heaved it out. There was a crash of impact. Silence fell.
> 
> "So, uh, what do you think of the new decor?"
> 
> Brett looked around, catching his breath. "It's a little barren."
> 
> "Oh, yeah?" Danny pulled the curtain back and looked down. "Because if Beaumont doesn't start moving soon, I know where you can get a line on a really good estate sale."
> 
> Brett pulled the curtain sharply to. "Don't joke," he said, rounding on Danny. 
> 
> Despite himself, Danny was taken aback. There was something in Brett's eyes that wasn't just the usual Sinclair steel. "You, uh, I, uh... no?"
> 
> "Never joke," Brett said, stepping closer, "about—" he brushed the backs of his fingers against Danny's hair gently— "interior—decoration." And he brought his face down quite close to Danny's, eyes intent. 
> 
> Danny found himself backing up along the carpet. "Don't joke, huh?" No answer. "Well, maybe you should shut me up, then."
> 
> Brett put a hand on the front of Danny's shirt, right below the open collar, and ran it up until he was gently gripping Danny's neck, which got him a breathless silence. "If you knew," Brett said, "how long I've been wanting to do... just that..." 
> 
> Danny started to find out. 
> 
> Two steps later Brett backed him into the overturned sofa and they tumbled down into it, but, funny thing was, it was a long time before they even noticed. 
> 
> * * *

 


End file.
